1. Field of the Invnetion
This invention relates generally to the field of communications. More particularly, this invention relates to systems and methods for call waiting suppression of an incoming communications signal to a communications device engaged in an ongoing communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telecommunications has experienced explosive growth, and more growth is planned as telecommunication access and numerous communications devices improve. This explosive growth is revolutionizing telecommunications services offered to subscribing customers. Of the service offering, the most relevant to this invention is the Call Waiting Caller Identification (Caller ID) services. A customer or a user of a telephone that is served by the Call Waiting Caller ID service is notified of an incoming call while the customer is engaged in an ongoing conversation (e.g., during a conversation with another party), is provided with directory information for the incoming call, and is enabled to interrupt the ongoing conversation to answer the incoming call. Typically, the customer is notified of the incoming call by an audible alert that is played when the incoming call is initially connected to a called telephone and then notified again by another audible alert that is played after an amount of time has elapsed. Along with the audible alert of the Call Waiting Caller ID services, the directory information of associated with a calling party's telephone number is provided to the called telephone or other display device associated with the called telephone. This directory information may include the calling party's telephone number, a geographic identifier, and/or a billing name or other information associated with the calling party's telephone number (if available) when an incoming caller line identification (ICLID) signal of the incoming call can be detected, decoded, and transmitted by a communications network servicing the called telephone.
The customer may respond to the audible alert(s) and/or use the displayed Call Waiting Caller ID information to make a decision to interrupt or terminate the ongoing conversation in order to answer and/or to prepare for the secondary incoming call. If the customer wants to selectively control incoming calls using Call Waiting Caller ID information, the customer has several choices—block all incoming calls, block a selected phone number (or alternate number associated with a phone number) of an incoming call, or ignore the audible alerts until the incoming call is further processed (e.g., answered by a network voice massaging system (or other call handling system) or until the caller hangs up). If the customer blocks all incoming calls during, then the customer is not audibly notified of any incoming calls during the ongoing conversation. If the phone number of the incoming call is blocked, then the customer may not have immediate notification of the incoming blocked communication to re-evaluate whether to accept the communication since circumstances for accepting the communication may change. If the customer ignores the incoming call and listens to unwanted audible alerts, then the customer may be annoyed and/or distracted with the repetitive noise alerting the customer of the incoming call. Thus, there is a need for improved systems and methods for handling an incoming call that minimizes an interruption of and/or a termination of an ongoing conversation.